Current
by katriel1987
Summary: She awakened to blackness and rushing water.


**Title: Current**

**Pairings: Perhaps slight implied Daniel/Janet**

**Spoilers: "Meridian," "Heroes"**

**Season: That's for me to know and you to wonder about :)**

**Content Warnings: Canonical character death**

**Disclaimer: "Stargate SG-1" and its characters are not my property. This story is for entertainment purposes and the author (me) is not getting paid for it. No copyright infringement is intended. (Really.)**

* * *

She awakened to blackness and rushing water.

Pain spiked through her head, and icy fingers tugged at her clothes, threatening to pull her under the water. Before she could regain her senses enough to try to swim, her hip struck a rock and she spun off wildly into the current, her leg numb with the promise of future pain when the shock and cold wore off.

Her survival instincts kicking in, she tried to swim, her small strokes weak against the raging current, taking her nowhere. The complete blackness was disorienting. She blinked, but her rebellious eyes refused to provide even the faintest spark of light by which to orient herself.

The current strengthened, and a sudden eddy pulled her head underneath the surface. She struggled, flailing wildly, and struck a jagged rock with her out flung wrist. She broke the surface and drew in one frantic breath before she was again pulled under. When she surfaced again, her limbs felt useless, as heavy as lead.

"Janet!" A voice shouted over the roar of water, clear as crystal in her ears. "Janet, _swim_!"

Startled, she forced her body back into motion. She coughed violently, then croaked, "Daniel?" She looked for him but saw only darkness, no glint of light reflecting off skin. Why couldn't she see? Why couldn't she remember how she had gotten here, in a river, in the dark? Her head hurt so much.

"I'm here, Janet." He sounded very calm and very close, close enough to touch. "You need to swim through the current, all right? The bank is not far. Don't fight the current. Just let it carry you and swim across in the direction you're facing."

She nodded, pain spiking behind her eyes, and did as he said, swimming with short, awkward strokes. Her left leg was still numb, and her injured wrist throbbed with every heartbeat, that pain eclipsed only by the stabbing agony in her head. Ordinarily she swam very well, but now it was all she could do to keep her face above water.

"Almost there," Daniel said, coaching her, his voice soothing. "Just a little farther."

Her hands smacked suddenly into hard stone and she gasped, but hung on. The current tugged at her body, trying to pull her back into the water.

"Pull yourself up, Janet," Daniel said sharply. "Pull yourself up!"

Numbly, her entire body shaking with cold and exhaustion, she did as she was told. A moment later she was sprawled on the bank, gasping for breath. The river still roared behind her, but sunlight was warm on her back, and she could hear Daniel's voice more clearly now.

"Good job," he said, and she thought his voice was shaking a little. "Good job."

"Daniel, where are you?" She turned her aching head, trying again to catch a glimpse of him through the darkness that covered her eyes. "Why can't I see you?"

"You have a head injury," he explained gently. "You fell from a bridge into the river and hit your head on a rock."

"Ohh...oh." No wonder her head hurt and her thoughts were all fuzzy, as if she had cotton wrapped around her brain. "I'm the doctor," she said tiredly. "I'm s'posed to tell you what's wrong."

"You're a doctor with a severe head injury," he pointed out logically. That was Daniel--always logical. She wasn't quite sure why it felt so good to have him here --but so strange as well.

"Janet!" Daniel said sharply as she started to drift away. She was so tired...she just wanted...to sleep...

"_Janet_!"

Her eyes snapped open. She knew he was right. She couldn't sleep, not with a head injury this bad. Besides, they needed to move, to find the others, find safety. She was on an alien world...right?

"Where are we?" She asked Daniel.

"P57-993. You were going to a village to give vaccinations when the bridge collapsed. _Janet_, stay awake!"

"I'm trying," she mumbled, and blinked a few times. If only she could _see_ something!

"Are you injured?" The doctor in her asked Daniel.

"No," he replied. "I'm fine." He sounded all right, calm, no hitch in his breathing. Mostly he just sounded worried about her, as well he should be. She wasn't even going to let herself think about how serious the damage must be to have blinded her. Or whether it was permanent...

_No_, she told herself fiercely. _No. You will see again. You have to believe you will see again._

Panic rose in her throat, but she fought it down. The darkness closed in around her, thick and smothering. In the river she had thought only of survival, of air and firm land beneath her feet. Now she thought of light, of colors...how could she find her way if she couldn't see?

"We need to go," Daniel said. "They're sending a search party but it will take them too long to reach us. We have to meet them halfway. Can you stand?"

"I still can't feel my leg," she said. "Can you help me?"

"I can guide you," Daniel replied after a moment. He sounded sad. "I can be your eyes. Okay?"

She started to nod, then stopped as pain rocketed through her head. Nausea rose again, and she rolled over and threw up onto the rocks, every spasm torturing her head. Afterward she lay curled up in a ball, moaning softly. She wanted it all to go away, to stop hurting so much, to let her rest.

"I know," Daniel whispered. Had she said that out loud? "You can rest, but first we need to find the rescue party. You have to get up, Janet. If you stay here, you will die."

Die. Did dying mean rest? Relief from the pain? Wasn't that what she wanted?

"Not yet," Daniel said. "You can't rest yet. They still need you, Janet. You have work left to do."

Was he really there? Some part of her refused to believe it. Why? Why shouldn't he be there? Something buzzed at the edge of her mind, some memory among a thousand memories twisted and displaced by the impact of rock against skull. If only she could remember...

"Listen to me." Daniel's voice was urgent. "You need to bandage your wrist. There are predators in the forest and you can't be leaving a trail of blood."

Bandage her wrist. She decided that goal was obtainable. She felt around in her pocket, found a knife, and cut off a strip of her shirt. She could feel the torn flesh at her wrist, blood still flowing. The cut was deep, so she bandaged it tight, wrapping two layers around the wound with fingers made clumsy by cold and exhaustion. The wrist felt better when she had finished. Now what was she supposed to do?

"Get up," Daniel ordered. "You need to find a cane. Something to help you walk. There's a stick off to your left that should work. You just have to get to it."

"You can't bring it to me?" She asked hopefully. A few feet seemed like a thousand miles to her.

Daniel sighed, the sound as expressive as pages full of words. "I can be your eyes," he repeated. "I can tell you where to go, what to do next. That's all."

Too tired to ask why, she slowly rolled over and scooted, using her good hand and her good leg, in the direction that Daniel told her to go. Her hand bumped into the stick, and she picked it up, measuring its width with her fingers. It seemed sturdy.

"It'll hold you," Daniel assured her. "Get up. Use it as a cane."

She stood, ignoring the pain, because Daniel had told her to. She had to trust him. He was the only person she had to trust. Without his guidance, she knew she would die.

"You need to go uphill," Daniel said. "There's a path to your left—it looks like an animal trail, but it should work."

She stood still, staring sightlessly into the distance.

"Janet," Daniel prompted gently, "you need to walk left and find the path, all right?"

"Okay," she agreed, and limped in the direction he indicated, still half-dragging her injured leg. She followed the sound of his voice uphill. The cadence of his words became her lifeline, her only anchor in a dizzying, confusing world she couldn't see.

For as long as she could, she obeyed Daniel's instructions. She kept going long after every muscle screamed at her to stop. By the time she finally fell and did not rise, she had covered more ground than she should have been able to in her injured state.

It had not been enough.

"Janet," Daniel said, worry edging his voice. "The rescue teams aren't far away. Janet, _wake up_!"

She lay crumpled in the deep grass beneath the spreading limbs of a massive shade tree. If not for the blood on her face and wrist, and the sickly pale shade of her skin, she would have looked like she was sleeping peacefully. She did not respond to Daniel's voice, and he knew that she was beyond his reach.

This time, she had gone too far for him to bring her back.

* * *

Colonel Jack O'Neill paused so abruptly at the edge of the forest that Teal'c almost ran into him. O'Neill had been searching relentlessly for hours with hardly a pause, and his sudden stop caught everyone by surprise. One hand raised for silence, he stared intently into the woods. After a moment he said quietly, "This way."

"Sir, did you see something?" Major Sam Carter asked hopefully, falling in behind her CO as he led the team down a gently sloping hill. The clear blue-green sky arched overhead, visible in gaps between the spreading limbs of massive trees. Wildflowers poked up through the grass here and there, larger and brighter than most on Earth. P57-993 was a beautiful, temperate planet, and the last place they had expected to find danger.

O'Neill shook his head slightly, swatting aside a low branch that almost smacked him in the face. "I don't think so," he admitted, "but there was--I don't know. Maybe I heard something. I just knew we were supposed to go this way."

"Sir, you know that if she was swept this far downstream, there's not much chance--"

"Carter, _we'll find her_," O'Neill said with steel in his voice. He glanced down at the grass in front of his feet and stopped dead. This time Carter did collide with him. She started to ask a question, but then she followed his gaze and her mouth fell open. There, sprawled in the grass as if asleep, was Janet Fraiser--bruised, battered, but _alive_.

"Told you so," O'Neill said with a quiet half-smile, and stepped aside as a medical team converged on the injured doctor.

Janet was rushed back to the SGC, where she underwent surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain. Her wrist was cleaned, stitched, and bandaged, and X-rays of her injured leg showed a massive contusion, but no break. The surgeon who had worked on her cautioned that it was possible she would not regain her sight, but to everyone's surprise she opened her eyes and immediately recognized O'Neill's face when she awakened.

Janet seemed to regain lucidity surprisingly fast, with one exception: she kept asking why Daniel wasn't there. When Sam gently reminded her that Daniel had died of radiation poisoning nearly three months before, Janet looked confused for a moment, then nodded and winced. "I know," she said. "But somehow I expected him to be here. I don't know why."

After a moment of silence, Janet looked up at the ceiling. "I think maybe he is here," she added, and smiled.

Daniel Jackson knew she couldn't see him, but he smiled back anyway.

"Take care of them for me, Janet," he whispered, almost loud enough for her to hear him.

* * *

**One Year Later**

_She was lying on the table, cold and still. Daniel hesitated in the doorway for a moment before crossing the room to her. She didn't look peaceful, he thought bitterly, staring at her ashen face. She looked dead. Utterly, irrevocably, permanently dead. She looked like Sha're had looked--fragile and not-real, more like a wax doll than the passionate person he once knew. _

_Janet Fraiser had been a great warrior who fought death and illness with unwavering ferocity. Janet the warrior was not there any more, not imprisoned in that silent shell of stiffening flesh. Why then did he want to lift the small, crumpled form into his arms and never let go? _

_His eyes stinging, Daniel stared at Janet's face, at the familiar nose, familiar eyebrows, a familiar mouth that had laughed sometimes and other times shouted orders that saved lives. She wasn't supposed to be dead. Not Janet, fire in a bottle, death's greatest opponent. Not Janet. _

_An image flickered, elusive, in the maze of Daniel's fragmented memories: Janet's face, pale and blood-streaked, as she quietly asked to be allowed to rest, to stop fighting. Did he recall his own voice urging her on, refusing to relent? Was the memory real, or the product of a mind that still muddled memories far too often, mixing and matching faces and words and events? _

_Had he really told her, once, that she had work left to do? _

_Daniel's gaze began to blur. He reached out to touch Janet's cold face. The motion felt like an echo of before, when she wanted to rest. Had he touched her face then? Had he willed her to keep fighting? _

_"Rest now, Janet," Daniel whispered. The tears he had been fighting finally escaped, one after another, and trailed down his face. He took her hand, the hand that once brought healing, and rubbed it as if to bring warmth back to flesh that would be forever cold. _

_"It's over now," he told her, nearly choking on the words. "Your fight is over. You did so much...saved us all. Now you can rest. Now it's up to others." _

_He bowed his head over her. "But they won't be like you," he said. "Never like you." _

_He stood there for a long time, holding her hand, because it felt so very wrong to let go. _

**FIN**

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story was supposed to end happy and cheerful--"Janet's alive! Daniel saved her!" And then I got to the part where he says she can't rest yet because she still has work to do. My muse, evil creature that she is, whispered, "What if Daniel remembers this after Janet dies, and tells her that she can rest now?"

I put my hands over my ears and started humming loudly.

"BUT WHAT IF HE DOES?" My muse shouted insistently.

She won. As usual. Evil muse.


End file.
